3 Halloween Dental Fails to Avoid this Year

Approximately 4-million kids will go trick-or-treating in Canada this Halloween, and they’ll come back with dozens of types of candy. While this candy is loaded with sugar, most kids make it through the holiday without causing too much damage to their smile. However, there are a few things kids do that exacerbate the damage done to their teeth. This year, we hope you’ll avoid these Halloween dental fails and keep cavities away from your smile.

Dental Fail 1: Not Brushing at the End of the Day

Many of the candies you eat will leave a trail of sugar and residue on your teeth. Even if you don’t see it, this leftover sugar and acid create an environment that’s ripe for cavities to develop. While brushing twice per day is recommended every day of your life, it’s especially important after indulging in candy on Halloween. If you don’t, then this leftover sugar and acid have a full day to eat away at your teeth, greatly boosting the chance of cavities or gum disease.

Dental Fail 2: Eating Nothing But Candy All Day Long

Let’s face it: Most kids are thinking about candy from the moment they know it’s Halloween. But just because it’s Halloween doesn’t give kids a license to eat nothing but candy the entire day.

Not only is this terrible for their teeth, but it also leaves them with very few nutrients or vitamins to energize their minds and bodies. Instead, ensure that healthy snacks and complete meals are also eaten on Halloween – your kids will appreciate when they feel energetic enough for trick-or-treating later that night.

Dental Fail 3: Drinking Sugary Beverages in Addition to Candy

While sodas and juices used to be standard beverages for kids, almost all dentists and doctors recommend avoiding them in 2017. That’s because even juices that seem directly squeezed from fruit are typically loaded with cavity-causing sugar.

As you might imagine, these sugary beverages are even more damaging to your teeth on Halloween, when kids are likely to eat hundreds of calories in candy. It is important to drink on Halloween, but choosing water will leave your smile clean and will keep you hydrated for the day’s events.

Keep Your Smile White and Healthy this Halloween!

By avoiding those three dental fails, your smile should come out of the Halloween holiday as healthy as ever. In the event that you experience sensitivity or pain, our Waterloo dental team can ensure that you have no cavities or other problems. Contact us today to see what we can do for your smile!

During this difficult time, we are trying to do our part during the COVID-19 crisis. We are continuing to see patients with dentofacial emergencies. This means as one of the few practices remaining open during this pandemic, we are treating patients with emergencies from our fellow dental colleagues, in the Waterloo and Wellington regions (Waterloo-Kitchener-Cambridge and Guelph and surrounding townships)
We hope to assist and help as many people as we can. We also hope this will reduce the number of patients that are visiting hospitals that can be treated by us, thus freeing up time and room for the hospitals and slowing the spread of this virus.
Some additional steps our practice has taken to slow down the spread of the virus and "flatten the curve" are:
- Sanitation of common areas such as the front entry doors and the waiting room in between every patient
- Appointments are spread out so that the waiting area only has one patient at a time
- All front desk staff are wearing masks
- State of the art air purifiers (Surgically Clean Air Units x5 in total)
- Patients receive gloves upon entering the clinic
And of course we have all required PPE protocol set as a standard by the Royal College of Dental Surgeons and the Province of Ontario.
During this time we all need to help each other and do our part, only then can we pull through this quicker and return to a more happy, thankful and prosperous society.
Wishing you all the best of health,
From our family to yours.